Various types of connectors have hitherto been used to provide electrical junction between electric circuits or electrical equipments. In general, these connectors are comprised of an insulating socket housing that holds therein a terminal having a wire-connecting portion and a contact. In this instance, the contact includes a male contact and a female contact, which are engaged with each other to make an electrical connection.
known as terminals used in the connectors as set out above are crimp terminals having the structure that the wire-connecting portion has crimped the core (bared portion) of a stripped wire, and insulation displacement terminals having the structure that the wire-connecting portion makes an electrical connection by forcing the wire into a U-contact to cut through its cover at that portion to make contact with the wire.
The insulation displacement terminals are connected to the wire generally in the state that they have been built in a socket housing. More specifically, a wire is forced into the U-contact of the insulation displacement terminal through an opening of the socket housing, and the cover of the wire is cut through so that the U-contact may be brought into contact with the core of the wire. Thus, insulation displacement connectors having the insulation displacement terminals can be very simplified in the operation to secure them to wires, enabling the securing operation to be automatized with ease.
Since, however, the insulation displacement connectors make an electrical connection by forcing the wire into the U-contact with its cover unremoved, they have had disadvantages that the reliability against conduction poorness is not sufficient and also they can not be applied for electric currents having a large capacity. For this reason, under the existing conditions, the crimp connectors are more widely still utilized than the insulation displacement connectors.
On the other hand, to describe the crimp connectors taking an example as illustrated in FIG. 6, a crimp terminal 11 comprises a contact 12 (a female contact in this example), a core (stripped portion) holding claw 13, a wire (unstripped portion) holding claw 14, and a hook 15 to catch the socket housing. A wire 21 is provided in the state that a cover 22 is removed at its end portion with a core 23 exposed. Also, the stripped portion holding claw 13 and the unstripped portion holding claw 14 are crimped by means of an anvil and a pair of crimping teeth, called crimpers, of a terminal-crimping machine (not shown) so that the core (stripped portion) 23 and the cover (unstripped portion) 22 may be respectively held with the claws.
After the crimp terminal 11 has been secured to the wire 21, the crimp terminal 11 is inserted to a socket housing 31 and received therein, as illustrated in FIG. 7. In this example, the respective crimp terminals 11 are secured to the wires 21 of a ribbon cable 24, and are received in the respective sections of the socket housing 31. Openings 32 at the front end face of the socket housing 31 are openings through which male contacts to be connected to the female contacts 21 of the crimp terminals 11 are inserted. When the crimp terminal 11 is of the type comprising a male contact, a pin of the male contact is projected from the above opening 32.
In this way, the crimp connector having the crimp terminal 11 crimps the core (stripped portion) 23 with the stripped portion holding claw 13, so that the electrical connection can be surely made, bringing about the advantage that it can be applied even for electric currents having a relatively large capacity.
However, in fabricating the crimp connector, two stages are required, comprising securing the crimp terminal 11 to an end of the wire 21 and thereafter inserting the crimp terminal 11 into the socket housing 31. Once the crimp terminal 11 has been secured to the wire 21, it is very difficult to mechanically automatize the operation to insert the terminal into the socket housing 31. Moreover, in instances in which a plurality of crimp terminals 11 are received in one socket housing 31, wires are required to be classified by color and must be set with precise arrangement. For this reason, under the existing conditions, the crimp terminals 11, after having been secured to the ends of wires 21, are manually inserted into the socket housing 31.